


Glass of Heartbreak

by LydeNicoKITE



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Feelings, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Memories, Romance, alternative universe, faerie!Nicky, way too much worldbuilding for a one shot, witch!Yusuf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27512332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydeNicoKITE/pseuds/LydeNicoKITE
Summary: When Nicky comes to visit, the grass becomes purple.It is not unusual to see flowers bloom and seasons change according to the mood of the people who visit the al-Kaysani’s Gardens, right at the edge between the human world, where the ones like Yusuf are feared but their services well-paid, and Nicky’s homeland. Yusuf has grown to love when the land becomes lilac: the colour is in his dreams, together with a pale blue that becomes silver, then green – Nicky’s eyes –, and the absolute light blue of the sky of their first meeting.***Yusuf learns to leave and to say goodbye. Nicky comes back for a last meeting.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 49
Kudos: 114





	Glass of Heartbreak

**Author's Note:**

> This fic fought to be written, demanded to be written, took a life of his own. I love it so much, but I'm glad it's over and now we can (hopefully) feel the feels together. 
> 
> This fic is for those who make my experience on tumblr 10000 times better, but most of all for the Nicky discord. I like you all a lot.

###  **Glass of Heartbreak**

When Nicky comes to visit, the grass becomes purple.

It is not unusual to see flowers bloom and seasons change according to the mood of the people who visit the al-Kaysani’s Gardens, right at the edge between the human world, where the ones like Yusuf are feared but their services well-paid, and Nicky’s homeland. Yusuf has grown to love when the land becomes lilac: the colour is in his dreams, together with a pale blue that becomes silver, then green – Nicky’s eyes –, and the absolute light blue of the sky of their first meeting. 

The border between home and the kingdom under the hill is a small river, almost a stream: when Yusuf was little and explored the Gardens with his siblings, he went to play by its banks and found the border innocuous, anticlimactic. He could have jumped to the other side if he’d put his mind to it, if his mother hadn’t made him swear not to do that. Growing up though, Yusuf’s senses have sharpened, his magic is a fifth sense which now advises caution every time he touches the dark, almost black earth near the river. As if whatever is on the other side of the river it is not to be trusted.

_ Because those like Nicky are not to be trusted. _

Joe is not helpless. His family has a tradition of magic that goes back six generations. Joe and his siblings, the seventh one, have more power than it is probably advisable. Joe remembers being four and seeing his sister Layla flying down the last steps of the stairs, light as a feather, graceful like a ballerina. His brother’s voice is so powerful that he promised not to sing ever again, because there was a girl temporarily driven to madness by its beauty and sorrow. 

Yusuf’s magic is sun-filled. He has always been able to help people, to alleviate other people’s burdens. When the war started, he realised he was the one who had to stay and help. The Gardens are a safe haven, a source of energy for all the magic users in the county. Someone had to stay, and Layla looked at him like there wasn’t even a question to answer.

He watched his siblings leave and come back only when his parents passed away. Now they send him letters and Yusuf loves them with all his heart, but when they ask him if he’s happy, if he isn’t lonely, a part of him wants to be honest:  _ I wanted to leave too. Not because I don’t want to stay, but because I want to come back, one day, knowing I have seen and helped the world. I have been lonely since Baba died. I miss us having breakfast in silence because we’re all grumpy in the morning. I miss your magic, Layla, the smell of cinnamon you leave in the air when you fly. If I was ready to break your heart, I’d tell you I really, desperately wanted to leave. But I lie, because I love you too much. Maybe I’ll leave when the war ends. Maybe I’ll find a reason to stay even then. _

Most days, he is not really alone: the Gardens are not a place for solitude. Every day there are new travellers and with the war going on, so many are running away and need protection. When the situation requires, he cuts his hair and uses drops of his blood to make spells, knowing magic requires a toll; he ties strands of his hair with red strings and feathers. He burns the nets and every time he feels a rush of possibility and power, the lines of reality blur in front of his eyes. Most of the time, however, no magic is needed: he simply offers a warm meal and a bed to whoever knocks on his door.

The nights when he cooks for twenty people and sings with them are the best ones, the house is alive again, people light paper lanterns and show off their magic in spectacles of light and fire. The Gardens become a summer haven, even just for a night; when he’s alone winter comes back again, asking for its rightful period of ice and snow.

Nicky has different colours than humans: he turns leaves blue with old words of magic, so that when Yusuf touches them and thinks of Nicky, they turn into birds and fly away in the direction of the river. 

In turn, Yusuf enchanted a pair of glasses for Nicky, so that he could see the colours like him, and read without straining his eyes. The gift is recent, so when Nicky uses them, Yusuf often gets a glimpse of Nicky’s mind. 

_ My dear _ , Nicky sends his way,  _ I think of you. _

They were never supposed to meet. Nicolò, whose true name sounds more like a whisper on water, low but sharp, ran to the Gardens carrying a woman in his arms, her long black hair matted with blood. It was midday and Yusuf was cleaning the porch from the autumn leaves. When Nicky came close, the branches above his head acted like it was suddenly spring, as if the Gardens recognised him as a traveler returning home.

Yusuf remembers Nicolò’s eyes switched in colour, size and maybe number in front of him, his appearance shifting so that he could seem more human. His  _ otherness _ was still unmistakable to a trained eye, but at the time Yusuf didn’t stop to think.

“She needs help.” Nicky had said “I know the differences in our blood, but she is human. She doesn’t deserve to die.”

They’d carried Quỳnh in the house together, while Nicolò whispered words in a language Yusuf barely understood, sweet and foreign and more similar to a melody than a sequence of words. Quỳnh had whispered in kind, a brief sentence that took a sob out of Nicky’s lips.  _ I love you too _ , Yusuf had understood. It sounded like a goodbye.

Quỳnh is one of the few humans that was born in one of the kingdoms over the river, under the hills. Nicky loves her like a sister, but still has to convince her to take the gift of immortality so that may not be separated by time. Quỳnh is stubborn in every aspect of her life, from the little ones, like insisting to ask for permission to cross the border every time she wants to visit Yusuf, to the big ones: she’ll live in the middle, at her own terms. She is not ready to become like Nicky, not when she has the choice. Yusuf knows how this hurts Nicky, but it is true it’s not Nicky’s place to decide.

Quỳnh was too stubborn to die, those first days when she stayed feverish and weak in Layla’s bedroom, Nicky by her side. More and more each day, Yusuf burns the blue leaves so that he can go back to the first conversation between him and Nicolò, while Quỳnh was recovering.

He misses the beginning of their story. Now the middle is too sweet, it hurts to think about it, and the end is too near and cruel. Nicolò and Yusuf are coming to an end after two years, but it feels like more. Surely two years can mean a million, just like an hour without Nicky hurts like an entire month of loneliness. Nicky told him Yusuf gives weight to his time, the greatest gift to give to someone who will live for so long it is almost ‘forever’. Nicky is young, but he has millennia in front of him. 

The war is ending, too. People come to the Gardens and carry good news with them, some chatter about the future with fresh and fragile optimism. It is clear that the wind of change, crisp and cold, has come back to knock on Yusuf’s windows. Yusuf should be happy. Is it so bad that he doesn’t care, that he wishes to go back and feel those first few days again, to relive the first time Nicolò took his hand and asked him to stay with him a little longer, because he desired more of Yusuf’s company? He keeps these thoughts for himself.

Those like Nicolò lie every day, it is just a foolish story to say they can’t. And yet Yusuf knows: Nicolò never lied to him. Yusuf let Nicky take his hand that day, and it wasn’t part of a trick. 

Nicky never lies. Even when Yusuf wants him to.

It was Nicky’s last visit. 

Yusuf is now used to the pearlish quality of his eyes, to the glint of metal that decorates his pointed ears. Yusuf loves Nicolò even if his lips taste of smoke and the fangs hurt him when they kiss with urgency, even if Nicolò has all the potential to be cruel like most of his people.

_ I could be cruel,  _ Nicky had said once _. More than humans. _

_ But you aren’t, that’s why it’s you. _

All of their recent meetings have been built on borrowed time, on urgent kisses and whispered promises. It’s getting harder to ignore the things they need to talk about, dangerously hanging over their heads like daggers. Yusuf has tried to make spells to know their future, giving away tears, hair and blood, but the result was confusing every time. He is too invested in the answer to be able to read it clearly.

“My love, please.” Nicolò said during his last visit. Yusuf tried to kiss Nicolò again, but Nicky placed his hands on Yusuf’s shoulders and pushed him away gently but with determination, his mouth was a sad line. Yusuf couldn’t resist and touched the worried line between his eyebrows. Nicky’s eyes closed briefly at the touch.

“I was hoping we could avoid this, tonight.” Yusuf admitted. He felt childish, a bit selfish: Nicky deserved to be free from something that was never meant to be.

“I can’t keep going here.”  _ I can’t keep coming back to you. _

“Is it because of your family?” Yusuf asked, his fingers brushed the golden crest over Nicky’s collarbone, the elaborate carving of leaves and branches of the broach keeping the dark grey cloak in place. Nicky doesn’t care for elegance and appearance, something unusual for his kind, but the broach is always visible, a cold glint of white gold that reminds them both of Nicky’s duties.

“The war is ending and they need me elsewhere to broker peace. I already did enough for this clan and the Queen here is getting restless. I remind her of the higher powers watching her every move.”

Nicky’s job is a difficult one, especially in their present time, when with the war going on the tensions between the different clans and kingdoms under the hills have risen to critical levels. The clan living near the Gardens has a precious history of neutrality that had to be preserved, the same neutrality that allowed the Gardens to avoid direct violence in the past five years, while the rest of the country is a map of earth soaked in blood and streams of tears.

Nicky was called to prevent a civil war inside the clan after the new Queen took power. Nicky brought Quỳnh with him, because she didn’t want to be left behind, and they’ve stayed over the river for four years now. A blink of an eye for Nicky, much more from Joe and Quỳnh’s mortal perspective.

“I can’t believe the Queen doesn’t want you here anymore. Andromache has always liked you.”

Andromache has always liked the al-Kaysanis, too. Since she became Queen, Joe secretly hoped for a special treatment. 

Nicky shook his head. It was clear that he was trying to find the right words, that he was back to being the Knight of the High Queen, whose words were heavy like his sword, weighted down by the power bestowed on him. Joe already missed _ his _ Nicky, the one who spoke excitedly about nature and wished to know more about Joe’s magic, the one who kept one of Joe’s drawings folded inside the secret compartment of the golden broach. It had been a luxury to get to know Nicky that well. 

“She asked Quỳnh to stay, but Quỳnh refuses to give a straight answer. It is a common behaviour among our people, despite how much she likes to remark how she’s different.”

Nicky’s hair is both the colour of ash, going from gray to almost black, and a non-descriptive brown. It would look drab on anyone else, but Joe can’t imagine him any differently, now that he knows how Nicky really looks like. Nicky said Yusuf is lucky that Nicky is different from his brothers: all of Nicky’s siblings have scales like lizards and claws, one only breathes underwater. Yusuf thinks Nicky is unique among his family in the way he loves Quỳnh like a sister, unconditionally, and will support her whatever choice she makes. Nicky can’t expect the same from his brothers.

“Also,” Nicky looked straight into Yusuf’s eyes. Yusuf knows, rationally, that it’s normal for faeries born at night to have the eyes the colour of the moon. And yet he thinks of Nicky as his moon, something special to cherish, a gentle light to help him when the night comes. Nicky’s eyes have always been mesmerising, but in that moment they were also defeated, sad. 

“I need to let you go.” 

After that, all words had left Yusuf, a rare sight, but Nicky didn’t seem surprised, just incredibly tired. He kissed Yusuf with a delicate finality, just once, cradling Yusuf’s face in his hands as if he was afraid to be denied even that touch of lips, which paled into nothingness compared to the ones of their beginning. It felt already like a goodbye.

Yusuf doesn’t know if Nicky will come back one last time. He thinks so, his heart says: “ _ Of course he will. _ ”, but what does the heart know of the future, of the affairs of the world? Nicky may already be in another land, far away where no one has heard of the al-Kaysani Gardens, of the magician who lives there, the last of his family left in the country. The magician who waits every night by the window, hoping to see the flowers bloom as if spring is coming early. 

Quỳnh is the first to visit after the war ends, two months after Nicky’s departure. They both rejoice, talking at the same time only to realise no words are needed. She hugs him tight and wipes the tears on her face quickly, while Yusuf lets them fall. His chest hurts from too many emotions asking to be set free under his ribcage. 

Quỳnh sits in front of him. She is wearing a beautiful pendant Yusuf has never seen before, vaguely resembling a black half moon. Quỳnh catches him staring at it and just smiles, her eyes gentle. It is an answer to a question Yusuf didn’t dare to answer.

“I guess I’ll see you around, then,” Yusuf laughs. It will be nice to have Quỳnh on the other side of the river permanently. He realises with a twinge of annoyance how watery his voice sounds, how easy is for his friend to see his wounds. Quỳnh surprises him by taking his hand. 

“No, Joe,” she says slowly, like she’s trying to make him understand. “You won’t. I’m staying.”

She looks at his face attentively, reading it. Quỳnh was trained like Nicky to find the silent answers in people’s postures and expressions, but this time there’s no need for her abilities. Yusuf is an open book of confusion. She opens her mouth again, but no words come out. Then she surprises him again by standing up abruptly, almost knocking down the chair.

“Are you kidding me, Joe? You’re  _ staying _ ?”

Yusuf blinks, stunned.

“I don’t understand your reaction, Quỳnh, I–”

Quỳnh’s dark eyes freeze him on the spot. 

“I can’t believe you.” she snarls. “You waited  _ six _ years, Joe.” 

She doesn’t give him the time to answer, to explain... what, that he can’t go? That it is too late, that it doesn’t feel right to leave his parents house empty?

That he needs to stay, because he can’t bear the thought of Nicky going back to find the door locked?

Quỳnh leaves so quickly it happens in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a smell of pine and smoke. Yusuf opens the door, thinking maybe he’ll have the company of strangers for this night that needs to be celebrated. 

No one comes. The streets are calm, the wind has stopped blowing. Yusuf stays awake the whole night until he sees the sun coming up behind the hills in a perfect incongruous silence. Usually the Gardens are awake with nature and animals, like the hare that seems to like Yusuf and visits almost every morning, but this time every bush is still. Even if he hasn’t prepared any spells, the air is charged with possibilities, it crackles around his fingers playfully. 

Yusuf searches in his heart what to do next, but the answer scares him. He looks at the river, hidden behind a line of trees, rustling quietly, and in that moment he misses his mother so forcefully his eyes water in seconds, so much that he starts cooking in a desperate attempt to take his mind elsewhere. 

He realises he thought Layla would come back as soon as the war ended, but she didn’t. Her life is far away, even if Yusuf is still in her heart, as she assures him in every letter, every month. She never said she would come back after Baba died, and Joe decided to believe so anyway. He doesn’t know if he wants to be angry still, when his siblings are all he has left. 

As it happened before, Nicky arrives long after midday, when Yusuf is on the porch, drawing the familiar landscape in front of him. It is now full spring, the real kind, so it takes a moment for Yusuf to realise he is not alone. It’s the lilac strands of grass under his fingers what brings him out of his trance. 

He looks up and Nicky is walking in his direction, his head held high. He is wearing black and grey like a long shadow and a white shirt that looks human-made. His eyes are pure silver, then light blue like the sky. The broach is missing, but Yusuf knows from the way Nicky is not running in his direction, from what his heart tells him, that nothing has changed on that matter. Loyalty is Nicky’s strength and flaw at the same time.

Nicky stops walking before Yusuf can see clearly how dark are the circles under his eyes. Yusuf stands up so quickly he thinks he might faint, then he rushes the words that allow Nicky into the house. 

For a moment they are both still, separated by metres of lilac grass, air tense with silence that a moment before sounded gentle to Yusuf’s ears. Now it’s the silence of the Gardens holding their breath. 

Silence breaks exactly like a person gasping after minutes underwater. Joe moves first, but it’s Nicky the one who kisses him with the desperation usually reserved to matters of life and death, an urgency that faeries shouldn’t feel, being immortal and untouchable. Nicky kisses him like a human, without holding back, lips cold but soft, he holds Joe close and Joe responds in kind, a desperate sound leaves his throat. 

They breathe with their faces so close it still feels like kissing. Nicky is not opening his eyes and Joe drinks up the sight so close in front of him, the line of his eyebrows, the thin silver scar that goes from the forehead through his eyebrow and eye, the thick eyelashes. Nicky looks and feels tired, the skin under his eyes is almost purple. 

“My one love,” Nicky says, words taken from a song of their beginning, “how I missed you.”

“My moon when I lost in darkness,” Yusuf answers in kind, the words taken from a poem of their beginning, “I have been lost without you.”

Nicky smiles and opens his eyes, ready to kiss him again. Silence breaks beautifully with the sound of Nicky’s laugh. 

In the three hours before sunset, Nicolò and Yusuf sit near the house, moving closer to the river as the sun dips lower and sunlight leaves the Gardens.

They talk quietly, Nicky speaks of the new kingdom he’s been assigned to, of a righteous King with a blinding smile.

“Lykon was kind enough to let me leave as soon as I asked. Others wouldn’t be so nice,” Nicky confesses. “Andy and Quỳnh don’t even know I’m already here.”

“Quỳnh is here, though, right?”

“Yes, she stayed. The Court loves her, no one is surprised by that.” Nicky looks over the river, it is still too early to see the distant lights of the city, under the hills. “But she is angry at you, said to me she won’t visit.”

“Ah,” Yusuf says. “Yes. Because I’m staying.”

“Are you?” Nicky’s stare is calm and attentive, so typical of him that Yusuf misses him already, again, always. “You just told me no one has asked for hospitality for a month, Joe. It is spring, and the wind of change is waiting for you.”

“I taught you how to recognise it,” Yusuf shakes his head, his tone light. “You can’t use it against me.”

“But it’s true.You taught me many things, and you taught them well. If I can say I know what love is, it’s because of you.” Nicky squeezes his hand like he needs strength. “That’s why I can’t bear to think of you here when you should leave.”

Yusuf finds himself crying.  _ They’re old tears _ , his mother would say,  _ you held them off for so long, but in the end they always break free _ . Yusuf is crying because Nicky is saying goodbye again, because the house is empty of his mother’s laugh and his father’s jokes. Because it will be years before Layla, Ali and Yusuf will have breakfast together again. 

Nicky holds him close, his strong arms familiar. Yusuf breathes in the smell of smoke still lingering, mixed with the one of grass and rain of another land, and lets himself cry.    
  
“It was selfish of me to come back,” Nicky murmurs, the pain in his voice surprises Joe in its intensity. “But I think we are allowed an epilogue, and there’s something I need to give you.”

Yusuf raises his head, his tears left a damp patch on Nicolò’s shirt but he doesn’t care. Nicolò has something small in his hand, no bigger than a thumb. When he presses his gift in Yusuf’s hand, he says, his voice uncertain like in the first days of their acquaintance: “Be careful, or you’ll cut yourself.”

It’s a piece of glass, lilac like the grass, then simply transparent a moment later. It is not normal glass in the way it weighs on Yusuf’s hand, one second heavy, the next light as a feather, as if its composition is still changing. It is triangular in shape, not beautiful, not carved. 

When he realises what it is, his heart stops for a moment.

“Nicolò!” Yusuf says Nicolò’s real name too, heart pounding, but Nicky doesn’t look chastised by Yusuf’s tone. 

“I can’t accept this. Nicky, how could you, no–”

“It happened before I left.” Nicky admits. “So much time before that, really. When I realised I couldn’t stay with you, even if I wanted to. We were in the orchard, and I was helping you prune the branches. It was our second summer and you were talking about leaving, about the cities you wanted to visit as soon as Layla came back. I realised... I realised I wanted to follow you anywhere, that I would have been glad to stay forever in the Gardens too, helping you cooking for the travelers, tending the garden. You created a small sun with your magic because you know I love it, and I felt my heart break. I couldn’t stop it. I could have tried, but I didn’t.”

A faerie loves once if they’re lucky, only once if they’re wise. One heart has to last for centuries, they can’t afford to leave too many pieces of it behind. But here it is, a fragment of it, a shard of glass.

“Glass of heartbreak,” Yusuf says. “I remember that afternoon. It was a good time.” 

Nicky’s hand moves on top of Yusuf’s, closing Yusuf’s fingers on the glass. 

“It was. But you have so much yet to live, I  _ know  _ it won’t be the best. The best is waiting,  _ it’s like the wind, it moves the branches, it dries the tears _ .” Nicky remembers each of Yusuf’s poems, he read them until the words were part of him.

“I can’t accept this.”

Glass of heartbreak can be used to fuel the most difficult spells, it can help a mortal live for centuries, more if used well. It can save lives and its powder can let you see the future clear as day. But Yusuf remembers something else, a line he read in one of the books he studied after he met Nicky for the first time. 

“You are the only one I can trust with it. It is yours anyway, and I’ll be fine. Yusuf, wait, don’t–”

Nicky sees him make a fist around the glass, in a way that immediately draws blood. Yusuf doesn’t hear the rest of Nicky’s words.

_ It happens instantaneously.  _

_ It is almost spring, Yusuf knows, because Nicky knew.  _

_ A year ago? More? Nicky doesn’t really keep track of time that way, even if it’s After Yusuf, Before Leaving. That much is sure.  _

_ Nicky looks around, Yusuf sees through Nicky’s eyes the kitchen, the yellow walls and the wooden chairs, the vase full of flowers. Nicky thinks he likes the flowers, but he adores the kitchen in its smell of magic and sugar, even if everything about it is foreign.  _

_ Yusuf sees the flash of a memory. Kitchen. -> Kitchen.  _

_ Nicky grew up cooking like a low peasant faerie in the kitchens of his Court, where the smell of herbs and blood and wine permeates the air at all times. Nicky is small and the last of his siblings. He cooks in a huge kitchen that looks like a cave with little rivers of wine and blood between the tiles, his hands create small buns of bread he later shares with Quỳnh, who is small and fragile like him and must be protected. There is no yellow softness in Nicky’s childhood kitchen, but maybe the same energy of creation and community.  _

_ Nicky’s memory-in-a-memory is interrupted abruptly by Yusuf hugging him from behind. Present-Yusuf is surprised by the experience of feeling what Nicolò felt, this ray of pure adoration and love that pierces the clouds of other thoughts. _

_ Nicky laughs –‘Oh no my laugh is terrible, I sound like a drunk donkey’, his mind buzzes with thoughts, present-Joe sees them like words running in front of him fast like hares– and shivers as Joe tells something in his ear. The words are lost because memory is fallible, but the feeling of Joe’s body against his is impossible to forget.  _

_ ‘I missed you’, says Joe, ‘Where were you last night?’ _

_ ‘I love your voice,’ Nicky thinks, but what he says is: ‘I was at a dinner I couldn’t miss.’ _

_ We ate deer hearts, thinks Nicky, and there were the best wine and the best dancers of the country, but I wanted to be with you all the same. I danced with a gorgeous faerie who could have caught my interest once, but now I’m ruined. I think you ruined me.  _

_ Present-Yusuf knows this happened before the orchard. Nicky’s heart is very much healthy and in place, beating furiously as Yusuf takes his hand and leads him to the round table in the room.  _

_ ‘You are a guest. What do you want to eat?’ _

_ Nicolò is nervous, he knows nothing of what humans consider acceptable at this time of day and season. Do humans even like sugar cobwebs? Yusuf mentioned he doesn’t drink wine, he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. _

_ What comes out of his mouth, a thought spoken out loud more than a conscious decision of answering Yusuf’s question, is a pathetic: ‘Uh… fruit?’ _

_ Idiotidiotidiotidiot _

_ Yusuf looks at him, blinks. Then he smiles. Yusuf al-Kaysani, the always kind, the golden son. Nicolò thinks: ‘I am so lucky to witness your smile.’ _

_ ‘Yeah, sure. Apple?’ _

_ ‘Didn’t you tell me the orchard does something magical to the apples?’  _

_ Yusuf rolls his eyes, his light mood unfazed by Nicky’s terrible attempts at conversing like a normal… being? Even gnomes can talk with honeyed words better than him.  _

_ ‘I have strawberries if you want. The last family who stayed here left me some. Nothing magical in them.’ _

_ Nicky nods, even if his mind is thinking of how lovely Yusuf’s curls are, how he would kiss him in that moment if Yusuf didn’t look so invested in finding the strawberries.  _

_ Nicky thinks it is quite useless to give him the red parts when the leaves are the only good thing, but he doesn’t argue with Yusuf’s rules of hospitality: he watches Yusuf separating the green from the red fruit, cutting the red parts in smaller bites. Maybe Yusuf gives them to the hares.  _

_ Present-Yusuf hums, he smiles even if no one can see him; now he remembers what happened. _

_ Nicolò stands up and eats the green Yusuf left on the counter: the plants have been picked a week ago, long enough that they don’t taste like water any more.  _

_ Now Yusuf is staring at him, wide eyes, and Nicky puts two more leaves in his mouth to postpone the moment when he’ll have to open his mouth and speak.  _

_ ‘You’re eating–’ _

_ The best thing happens next. Yusuf laughs, and it’s not a mortal laugh, graceless and obtuse, or a faerie’s laugh, high-pitched and contrived. It is a laugh that shakes his whole body, harmonising eyes, face and shoulders. Nicky sees the crinkles in his eyes, his smile. He can’t do anything but look at him, transfixed.  _

_ It is almost painful to feel what Nicky felt in that moment, the steel determination of his love. Present-Yusuf is surrounded by thoughts, they circle around him and vanish before he can read them. He catches only a few of them. _

_ Only you. _

_ You are the only– _

_ I love you. _

_ You gave me so much, I can’t– _

_ I will wait forever.  _

_ Yusuf, I– _

_ I am not worthy of— _

_ I can wait– _

_ It is too much at the same time. He has to come back before the shard breaks.  _ He has seen enough. 

Yusuf opens his eyes to the present. He is in his bed, and someone  _ –Nicky _ , Nicky who will love him and wait for him, even if they both can’t admit it out loud– covered him with a blanket. It is night outside, but there’s a soft yellow light coming from the corner where Nicky is reading, human glasses on his Roman, unfaerie-like nose. 

“You never listen to me,” Nicky says, looking everything but surprised. He has Yusuf’s copy of their favourite collection of poems opened on his lap, but while Yusuf looks at him he puts the book back on its shelf. 

“You would have done the same,” Yusuf replies without hesitation. Yusuf sits on the bed while Nicky shows no sign of leaving his corner. There’s an awkward moment when Nicky takes a step to the bed just when Yusuf stands up to exit the room.

“Do you want…” Yusuf wants everything. Nicky seems to read it in his eyes, because he smiles and looks down with a small huff.

“I can stay the night, but first, can I have the honour of the last dinner of the Gardens?”

Yusuf thinks of his bags, packed a week ago in a moment of clarity, before his fears advised him it wasn’t the right time yet. He is still going from feeling panic to relief, but when Nicky takes his hand and leads him to the yellow kitchen of the memory, relief wins. He has been tired of empty rooms for a long time. 

There is also the way Nicky looks at him, which is different now that Yusuf has been inside his head and felt the long promise that is Nicky’s love. Yusuf’s heart has been right many times, even if it didn’t seem so at the beginning –Nicolò came back to say goodbye, after all–, and right now it says that there will be a time when they’ll be allowed to be together. The shard is a window to the past, but what if it’s a promise for the future? What then? What if they’ll see each other again, in another time, in another place.  _ On the other side of the river and the hills, where lovers meet and exchange a kiss,  _ as Layla sang when she was little. 

Nicky kisses him on the forehead, something Yusuf used to do with him when he found Nicky reading on the floor, piles of books around him. 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Nicky smiles, and Yusuf is also smiling a little, hope bursting in his chest like a bird asking to be freed. “You’re going to see the world.”

In the poetry book there’s a note, which Yusuf will find another night, under the sky of another country. 

“What is it? Why are you crying?” Nile Freeman will ask. She will be Yusuf’s dearest friend.

“Oh, don’t mind me. You know I cry for everything.”

_ I love you still. I know our paths will cross again.  _

_ -N _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> You can find me on tumblr! I'm @nicolodigenovas :3


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